Giga Omni Media Raises Another $4.5 Million

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Giga Omni Media has secured another $4.5 million in funding, bringing the total to $5.3 million according to Michael Arrington, who disagrees with the decision to raise money at all. Om Malik writes:

We are going to use this new investment prudently, to enhance our technology platform and content offerings, add to our current portfolio of publications and expand our Events and Briefings businesses. We are in investing for the long-term — in ourselves.

This move shows that Giga Omni Media will continue to expand aggressively, and further acquisitions, following the ones of jkOnTheRun and The Apple Blog, is likely.

Weblogs, Inc. co-founder Brian Alvey’s new startup Crowd Fusion receives Funding

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Brian Alvey, the co-founder of blog network Weblogs, Inc. (along with Jason Calacanis), announced earlier this week that his new startup, CrowdFusion, has received funding from venture capital firm Velocity Interactive Group.

Brian writes:

Here are some more details on the funding:

* Our valuation was “somewhere south of Facebook’s”.
* Because Crowd Fusion didn’t exist when Jon Miller left AOL, Time Warner’s non-compete couldn’t block him from joining our board.

But seriously, there is some confusion as to whether Crowd Fusion is a publishing company or a platform company. I’ll have to do another post to clear that up better, but for now just know that we’re a publishing company with our own platform and both are named Crowd Fusion. Did that help?

Crowd Fusion markets itself currently as a “Web Publishing System built to solve the pain points of publishers at scale”. The startup also includes Judith Meskill, another Weblogs, Inc. veteran, as Chief Operating Officer, along side Brian Alvey as CEO.